Texas Sierra Club released the following statement today.
TXU-Luminant Violated Clean Air Act Over 38,000 Times
Earthjustice, the Environmental Integrity Project, and Sierra Club Call on Luminant to Clean Up Three Texas Power Plants
[Dallas, Texas] - Today, Earthjustice and the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), on behalf of the Sierra Club, put Energy Futures Holdings Corp. and its subsidiary, Luminant Generation Company, LLC (formerly TXU) on notice that the groups will sue the company for committing more than 38,000 alleged violations of the Clean Air Act.
The two notices of intent to sue are aimed at tens of thousands of ongoing air pollution violations at Luminant's Big Brown and Monticello coal-fired power plants in Northeast Texas. Earthjustice's notice targets the Monticello power plant located in Titus County and EIP's notice targets the Big Brown power plant located in Freestone County. In September of 2010, the groups sued Luminant for similar violations at its Martin Lake power plant in Rusk County, Texas; that case is still pending. Earthjustice, EIP, and the Sierra Club seek to compel Luminant to stop putting Texans' health and lives at stake and bring its power plants into compliance with its air pollution permits.
"It's high time for Luminant to act like a good neighbor and stop dumping harmful pollution on its neighbors within the state and outside the state," said Earthjustice attorney Suma Peesapati.
In 2007, when TXU became Luminant through a highly leveraged buyout, the company promised to become a leader in environmental stewardship for Texas. However, three of Luminant's coal plants--Big Brown, Monticello, and Martin Lake--are the top three industrial polluters in Texas among nearly 2,000 industrial plants. These exceptionally dirty plants, combined, spew more than 25% of the state's industrial air pollution and more than 46% of the state's coal plant pollution, according to data Luminant filed in 2009 with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
"Breathing excessive levels of harmful air pollution should not be a way of life for the people who live and work near Luminant's plants," said EIP attorney Erin Fonken. "Luminant must be held accountable for its thousands of violations and clean up its act."
The formal notices of intent to sue filed today are a legal prerequisite to initiating a federal Clean Air Act citizen suit. The notices not only provide Luminant with the allegations of wrongdoing, but also provide a 60-day window for the federal Environmental Protection Agency to consider intervening in the suit.
"Luminant continues to avoid cleaning up these filthy plants even when their own emissions data show they are polluting at excessive levels, especially when compared to the rest of our industrial sources in Texas," said Jen Powis of the Sierra Club. "The science is solid: air pollution harms people's health, property, and livelihoods and the emissions from these two giant coal plants are a big part of the problem."
Today's notices target excessive levels of particulate matter, also referred to as soot. The company monitors the opacity of its smokestack emissions in order to meet safe soot levels. Luminant's own data reveals that the Monticello power plant violated its allowed opacity limits nearly 18,000 times during the past five years. The company's data reveals that the Big Brown power plant violated its opacity limits over 20,000 times in the past five years and its particulate matter limits 370 times in the past three and a half years. Particulate matter emissions contribute to asthma, heart attacks, other serious illnesses, and thousands of premature deaths every year.
Earlier this year, Sierra Club provided Luminant with reports based on the company's own data demonstrating that Big Brown, Monticello, and Martin Lake also contributed to unsafe levels of sulfur dioxide near all three coal plants. The sulfur dioxide levels were demonstrated to be far higher than those deemed safe by the EPA in its national ambient air quality standards. For example, the data showed that, in a 5-mile radius surrounding the Big Brown plant, sulfur dioxide levels can reach nearly triple what is safe to breathe. EIP's letter regarding the Big Brown power plant reminds Luminant that the plant's sulfur dioxide emissions are causing pollution levels that harm the health of people living nearby and are prohibited by Texas air quality rules.
"Luminant operates some of the dirtiest coal-fired power units in the country," said Dr. Neil Carman of the Sierra Club. "Collectively, the Monticello, Big Brown, and Martin Lake coal plants emit approximately 4,000 pounds per year of toxic mercury, over 185,000 tons per year of asthma-causing sulfur dioxide, and over 33,000 tons per year of smog-forming nitrogen oxides. Time is running out. Luminant must clean up these plants now."
Hundreds gathered at the University of Texas's LBJ Auditorium yesterday to voice their opinions for, and against, Transcanada's Keystone XL pipeline which would carry diluted bitumen, an unconventional form of oil, from the oil sands of northeastern Alberta to southeast Texas. I was there to check out the proceedings, and a few things struck me that I'd like to share.
The Pro-Pipeline Activists Are Very Well Organized Several dozen members of the Laborers' International Union of North America were in attendance wearing matching shirts to support the pipeline they believe will give them multiple construction contracts in the coming years. They arrived first to the Austin hearing, and outnumbered pipeline opponents at other hearings in Montana and Port Arthur, TX.
Pipeline Could Fail in Texas due to Eminent Domain Abuse Much like the Trans Texas Corridor before it, the Keystone XL pipeline would require unprecedented abuse of eminent domain laws, according to the executive director of We Texans, Debra Medina. She said that a "recent decision by the Texas Supreme Court in the Denbury Green Pipeline case, which was sent back to a lower court after the company failed to prove it was confiscating land for the public good, shows that a higher bar has been set for oil companies to cite eminent domain in condemning people's property."
Nebraska Contains the Strongest Opposition to the Pipeline Unlike other states, Nebraska's anti-pipeline coalition includes high level figures from across the political spectrum. The state's Republican governor, Dave Heineman, and both its US senators, Ben Nelson (D) and Mike Johans (R), lined up with thousands of others recently to express their outrage at the proposed route of the pipeline across the state's sensitive Ogallala Aquifer.
There Is Still Time To Fight This Outrageous Pipeline! The State Department is accepting public comment until October 9th, here. Let them know that this pipeline is a grave threat to Texans' land, air, and water. This pipeline might be a boon to one Canadian company, but it will be a disaster for our state and country.
Again, please contact the State Department and tell them Texans want nothing to do with the toxic tar sands pipeline. A few thousand temporary jobs are not worth the grave economic and environmental threats posed by this terrible plan.
In December, the State Department will decide whether, or not, to allow construction of the 2,000 mile long Keystone XL pipeline that would transport a million barrels per day of the dirtiest form of petroleum, diluted bitumen or dilbit, from deposits in the Athabasca river basin in Alberta, Canada through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma en route to refineries in Port Arthur and Houston. This pipeline will endanger the water supply for tens of millions of Americans, and put one of the greatest agricultural regions on Earth at grave risk. The period for public comment on the tar sands pipeline officially ends on October 8.
Action must be taken now to prevent this looming ecological disaster from occurring.
Diluted Bitumen is exceedingly nasty stuffDilbit is not oil in the classic sense. In nature, it is sticky, asphalt coated sand, or tar sands, found beneath the vast, pristine Canadian boreal forest. The tar sands are extracted by strip mining huge tracts of forest (it requires 2 tons of sand to produce one barrel of oil). The sands are then processed using enormous amounts of water, natural gas and solvents in order to dilute it into a substance liquid enough to flow through a pipeline. This process emits plumes of toxins into the air, and leaves large ponds of heavily polluted water that are believed to leak over a billion gallons of heavily contaminated water a year into the Athabasca river. High concentrations of mercury, thallium, lead, benzene, arsenic, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons have been found downstream of the extractions sites, leading to extremely elevated rates of rare cancers in nearby residents and fish found with major deformities (one was found with two mouths). The amount of energy required to convert this stuff into a transportable fluid will see this nearly uninhabited corner of northeastern Alberta produce more CO2 emissions than Denmark (5.5 million inhabitants) by 2015. This is what a tar sand mine looks like from space. The mine itself is on the left of the map, the "lakes" are the contaminated tailing ponds, and the Athabasca river runs south to north to the right of the ponds. It is also not safe once it leaves Alberta. The corrosive nature of dilbit makes pipelines 16 times more likely to leak than when they carry crude oil.
Texas is in an unprecedented environmental emergency.
Eighty-one percent of the state is currently suffering exceptional drought. It’s the worst one-year drought Texas has experienced in 116 years of state records.
Texas is literally on fire. Over 3.6 million acres have burned in wildfires topping the record 1.8 million acres burned in 2010 with less than four months left. There’ve been over 21,000 fires in Texas and wildfires in the state for 300 straight days. The Bastrop fire has been burning out of control for six days and nearly 1,400 homes have been destroyed 30 miles from the state capitol leaving Austin in clouds of toxic smoke.
CLIMATE CHANGE Governor Perry has shown concern about the severe drought and wildfires. Now it’s time for Perry to stop denying the root causes of climate change and take action to address those causes.
Climate change is caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Coal plants are the largest industrial source of carbon dioxide (CO2), the chief global warming gas. Texas’ 19 coal-fired plants are the worst industrial cause of life-threatening, climate triggered perils that we are experiencing. Texas coal-fired plants emit over 150 Million Tonsof CO2 every year – over 99% of Texas coal plant air pollution — is currently unregulated. Defended by Governor Perry, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and the Texas Public Utility Commission, the Texas coal plants are continuing to heat our atmosphere, fueling the drought conditions leading to wildfires and putting 24 million Texans in harm’s way.
Texans’ health and lives are at risk! Governor Perry and his appointees who lead Texas state agencies must address the biggest root cause of climate change in our state – coal plant CO2 emissions.
OZONE, TOO Beside smoke from wildfires, 18 million Texans are breathing harmful ozone. Ozone is caused when nitrogen oxide emissions from factories like coal plants mix with volatile organic compounds in sunlight creating ground-level smog. According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), Texans have suffered 56 bad air days in 2011 when the ozone levels were unsafe.
After cutting funds by 75% from the Texas Forest Service year, Governor Perry is now calling for help to fight wildfires from the same federal government that he attacked in law suits for trying to protect Americans air from unsafe coal plant pollution. Perry enlisted the TCEQ, the Rail Road Commission, and the Texas PUC to fight new federal safeguards against both CO2 and ozone.
By fighting federal safeguards against ozone, Governor Perry and state agency leaders are denying that serious problem too. They need to wake up to the reality of our ozone problem and help, not hinder, efforts to clean up our air and cool the atmosphere.
To Governor Perry, ERCOT, and PUC, we say: Wake up!
The price tag for drought and wildfire destruction is too high. Losses to Texas’ agriculture alone were about $5.2 billion before the Labor Day weekend fires. We now face greater costs. Ignoring climate change and fighting, rather than supporting, clean energy solutions is costing Texans lives, homes, and jobs.
FIRST RESPONDERS COMMITMENT On the campaign trail, Governor Perry has repeatedly criticized public works programs like the New Deal, yet Texas firefighters fought to protect the beautiful cabins built by New Deal workers in Bastrop State Park this week.
Perry, ERCOT, and the PUC need to respond like our brave fire fighters putting out the blazing wildfires across Texas. The Governor and state leaders must recognize and extinguish the root cause of these problems – the massive burning of coal in coal-fired power plants in Texas. There’s a safer, cleaner, cheaper way, Governor, and the stakes are too high to continue to allow the burning of dirty coal.
Neil Carman, PhD Chemist, Sierra Club Clean Air Program Director, September 9, 2011
As if we needed any more evidence demonstrating that anthropogenic climate change is real, that it is occurring right now, and that it poses a major threat to the planet's environment, we now have it -- in spades. Let's begin with the assessment by a Penn State University investigation, which completely exonerated climate scientist Michael Mann from any wrongdoing in the ridiculous, trumped-up, never-any-truth-to-it, pseudo-"scandal" known as "climate-gate." In reaction to this report, former House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) -- full disclosure, Boehlert's on the NRDC Action Fund board -- issued a statement which read:
This exoneration should close the book on the absurd episode in which climate scientists were unjustly attacked when in fact they have been providing a great public service. The attacks on scientists were a manufactured distraction, and today's report is a welcome return to common sense. While scientists can now focus on their work, policy makers need to address the very real problem of climate change.
Well said, Congressman, and keep up the great work, Professor Mann!
"no errors that would undermine the main conclusions in the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on possible future regional impacts of climate change"
"the summary conclusions are considered well founded, none have been found to contain any significant errors"
"ample observational evidence of regional climate change impacts, which have been projected to pose substantial risks to most parts of the world, under increasing temperatures"
In fairness, the Dutch report leveled several criticisms of the IPCC report: 1) even the few, minor errors shouldn't have been allowed to slip by; 2) the report's summary statement should have been written to provide a higher amount of transparency regarding its sources and methods; and 3) the report tended to focus solely on the adverse consequences of climate change, not on potentially positive impacts. These are non-trivial issues that need to be addressed. Having said that, as Joe Romm points out, "the overwhelming majority of research since the IPCC has found that the IPCC has consistently underestimated many key current and future impacts, particularly sea level rise (and carbon-cycle feedbacks)."
In the end, the bottom line from these reports is clear: the science behind human-induced climate change has emerged from this entire, ridiculous, episode overwhelmingly intact -- if not strengthened. The only real question now is, what are we going to do about it?
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has formally disapproved of Texas's flexible air permit plan after over a year of wrangling between the federal agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). The EPA contends that the program, which has been managed by TCEQ since 1995, does not comply with the Clean Air Act. The state claims that its permitting process is effective in reducing air pollution and that the EPA's actions will unnecessarily hurt Texas' economy. The debate came to a head on May 25th, 2010 when the EPA took over control of an air quality permit for a Corpus Christi power plant and threatened to take over 39 more if the TCEQ did not change its permitting process.
At issue are Texas' controversial 'flexible permits' which allow facilities to group emissions from multiple smokestacks under one permit. In most other states, flexible permits are limited to minor emission sources, but in Texas they are given to large facilities, especially along the gulf coast. At larger facilities, a significant number of smokestacks could fall under the same permit, allowing some smokestacks to emit over the legal limit and raising concerns about the practical enforceability of emissions limits for each smokestack.
Perry isn't taking the affront to his stellar environmental record lying down. On June 14th, 2010, State Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a federal court challenge to the EPA's actions. The state is arguing that the EPA had a year from when TCEQ submitted the revised rules for the permitting program (1996) to act on them, but they did not do so until 14 years later.
"We are defending our flexible air permitting program because it works," said TCEQ Chairman Bryan W. Shaw in a press release. "EPA is not able to demonstrate how our program is less protective of the environment than the bureaucratic federal approach. EPA's philosophy of more bureaucracy by federalizing state permits will not lead to cleaner air, but will drive up energy costs and kill job creation at a time when people can least afford it."
Perry has been billing the conflict as an economic and states' rights issue more than an environmental issue, which may play well with voters, but hasn't convinced the EPA to back down so far.
As if the oil companies from Texas – and their allies in the corridors of power - hadn’t done enough harm to our country already (for more, see the late, great Gulf of Mexico), now they are at it once again. This time, it’s Valero and Tesoro, pouring money into a campaign this election season to undo California’s landmark, clean energy and climate law, AB 32. On Tuesday, the oil companies’ proposition was certified for the November ballot. The fight, as they say, is on!
SXSW is doing some pretty meaningful things to reduce its greenhouse gas pollution. Some highlights:
Carbon Offsets. SXSW began offsetting it's own carbon emissions (presumably just from their offices?) in 2006. Since then, the three festivals (interactive, film, and music) remain committed to maintaining carbon neutrality and increasing efforts to lower footprints.
Clean Power. "For SXSW, sustainability begins ... on the roof." SXSW installed a solar array atop their own Austin offices a couple of years ago, which has since generated 7,143 kilowatt hours of clean electricity, and is making a significant dent in their electricity bill. The installation also lessens the company's use of Austin's coal-, nuke-, and natural gas- fired electricity resources.
Greener Transportation. (More fun than driving...) The festival recommends walking, biking, pedicabbing and shuttling whenever possible. SXSW has an ongoing arrangement with Bicycle Sport Shop to offer a wide range of rentals. If you must drive, SXSW has arranged with Enterprise-Rent-A-Car to offer a carbon offsets option; SXSW additionally recommends renting hybrid.
Greener Sleeping. SXSW's Web site provides a "green friendly" filter option when booking hotels. Hotels listed provide a link to their list of green practices. If you're coming in from out of town, SX recommends letting your concierge know you want to support environmental actions when you check-in. And of course, be kind -- "turn off your lights and water when you leave your room; set your air conditioning a few degrees higher while you're out; recycle..." (Such practices also reduce greenhouse gas impacts.)
Paperless Planning began in 2003. In 2008 SX's Registration Department saved 12,000 sheets of paper. Most recently the Interactive and Film Departments have made the switch to paperless, further reducing one of the embodied energy impacts related to the festivals.
(The TCEQ is fixing to be a major story in the coming months. Good to see that Sierra Club is already out in front on it. - promoted by Katherine Haenschen)
Recently, Texas got some big news. It's a story that Texans have known for years and have been shouting out loud, but no one seemed be listening. Until a couple weeks ago. President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruled that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is not following the federal Clean Air Act!
It takes a lot for the EPA to step in and say enough is enough. Here in Texas they've finally done just that. And it's about time. However, a ruling is not enough. Time is running out considering 11 new coal-fired power plants are proposed across the state. The EPA should halt the permitting or construction of any new coal plants in Texas until the TCEQ cleans up it's act. Because air regulation in Texas has been like law west o' the Pecos, it's not surprising there are more proposed here than any other state in the nation, nor surprising that many of the17 coal plants chuffing away in Texas rank amongst the absolute filthiest. The coal companies are getting away with too much.
Texans deserve better. How about some clean air to breathe!
So, this week we (Sierra Club) and Public Citizen launched a statewide tour with a huge inflatable coal fired power plant visiting communities that would be impacted by the proposed coal plants-collecting comments to send to the EPA, hearing community members speak out, letting other community members know what's going on and asking them to take action!
This could be a huge deal for Texas, as long as the EPA knows that Texans are in their corner and that we want the TCEQ to do it's job by protecting the health and well being of us-the people-instead of just taking money for permits.
Coal is the dirtiest, least efficient energy source available. If you consider doubled asthma rates a problem, then you will say its been disastrous to the health and well being of Texans. Texas is already infamously number ONE in the nation for mercury pollution. In fact, coal plants in Texas emit nearly twice as much mercury pollution as power plants in other states. We're number ONE in our nation for carbon dioxide the principal gas causing global warming.
Texans deserve better. Submit a comment. Get involved. So far, we've been to Abilene, Waco and Dallas, College Station, Corpus Christi, Bay City and Houston. Next stop, next week-Austin! See you out there.
This morning on NPR there was a story on fracking (hydraulic fracturing, in which water and chemicals are pumped into the ground at extremely high pressures to force natural gas to the surface), interviewing one Texan, Steve Harris, who believes the practice contaminated his drinking water. Fracking is completely exempted from federal regulation due to a loophole inserted in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
Steve Harris believes that pressure also ruined his well. He lives on 14 acres south of Dallas. Shortly after a driller fracked a nearby well, he and his neighbors noticed a change in water pressure.
"When you'd flush the toilet - in the back where the bowl is - water would shoot out the top of the bowl," says Harris.
When he took a shower, there was a foul odor, and the water left rashes on his grandson's skin. His horses stopped drinking from their trough, and there was an oily film on top of the water.
As if we needed any more evidence demonstrating that anthropogenic climate change is real, that it is occurring right now, and that it poses a major threat to the planet's environment, we now have it -- in spades. Let's begin with the 
As if the oil companies from Texas – and their allies in the corridors of power - hadn’t done enough harm to our country already (for more, see the late, great Gulf of Mexico), now they are at it once again. This time, it’s Valero and Tesoro, pouring money into a campaign this election season to undo California’s landmark, clean energy and climate law, AB 32. On Tuesday, the oil companies’ proposition 